That's a good point about the older generation. I have a few friends who feuded with their parents when they quit a very very good engineering job at a big company to do their own thing instead.

That being said I do think that doing a startup is perceived as being cool by their peers. I've met at least a handful of people who I'd cautiously call "fangirls".

(Perhaps an overflow from their perceived coolness of working in SV/SF -- which honestly doesn't make much sense to me since their motivations to cross the pond is often profoundly lacking in substance)